Previews

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Kojima Productions unleashes an English-language demo on the public at E for All!

Spiffy:

Octo-Camo evolves MGS3's camo system well; threat radar is intuitive.

Iffy:

Auto-aiming and CQC both are in need of some more fine-tuning before release.

During its first two days, the E for All expo has been a largely muted affair. The show has attracted a number of cosplayers and young console fanboys, but certainly hasn't packed the South Hall of the LA Convention Center on the scale that E3 used to. Nevertheless, it's fair to say that Konami stole the spotlight with its demo of Metal Gear Solid 4. Only the lines for Super Smash Bros. Brawl came close to matching the snaking row of players around Konami's booth, all desperate to be among the first to play MGS4 on American soil. After a quick overview of the game's Dual Shock 3-based controls, gamers were unleashed on the prototype for brief, five-minute sessions. We were among those gamers. Twice, actually.

The sequence we played is similar to the one shown during Tokyo Game Show, aside from English localization and a few very slight gameplay adjustments. The action starts roughly thirty minutes into the storyline of the game, and Snake's gotten some cues that Liquid Ocelot is encamped in a Middle Eastern country. It's Snake's job to make his way to a rendezvous point on the map while avoiding the AT Corporation's tanks, which are code-named "Irving." Snake calls them "lizards." Speculate as you will. He gets a beep on his codec, which loads up the new video chat-like Codec system. As in Snake Eater, you can fast-forward through the cutscene, or skip it entirely.

You'll still stand, crouch, and crawl with X, but there have been additional gameplay tweaks. For instance, the Square button now modifies your aiming. The game defaults to an auto-aim in the vein of the first MGS on PlayStation, or you can hit Square, and in a dose of irony, the camera reverts to the Splinter Cell-style over-the-shoulder camera. Triangle acts as a context-sensitive button for picking up enemies, interacting with the environment, and also for attaching to walls and blending into them. You'll still pick items with the secondary shoulder buttons, so your new oil barrel and trusty rations can still be found on the left side, while your armaments are on the right side.

The new Octo-Camo system functions as something of an evolution from MGS3's camouflage implementation. In the PS2 game, you had to pause the action, go into a menu, and pull up the most appropriate concealment for your environment. Now, Snake just leans against a wall or lies down on the floor, and his stealth suit takes on the qualities of what he's pressed against. We've learned from Assistant Producer Ryan Payton that you'll also be able to save some of the camos, which have yet to be named, for future use. The camouflage meter from MGS 3 is still intact, so if you lie still on the ground, you won't have to worry as much about the game's "nowhere to hide" tagline. The floor should be good enough. We put it to the test as we lay on the ground near an unsuspecting guard, who came up, expressed some shock at finding a "corpse" on the ground, and went back about his business.